


david rose: world's okayest brother

by golden_geese



Category: Schitt's Creek
Genre: M/M, Nightmares, Panic Attacks, Stress Dreams, i love alexis v much but GOD can u imagine how stressful it would be to be her sibling....., patrick is a legend for putting up with david honestly, this is my first sc fic!!!!!!!!!!!!
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-09
Updated: 2019-03-09
Packaged: 2019-11-14 16:08:50
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,329
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18055718
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/golden_geese/pseuds/golden_geese
Summary: alexis used to be a globe-trotting, trouble-getting-into, bad-boyfriend-picking disaster. david still has stress dreams about it from time to time.





	david rose: world's okayest brother

It doesn’t feel like a dream.

It doesn’t start with waking up; he’s just there, in his old apartment in New York or in his parent’s mansion in Atlantic Canada or sometimes the motel room or really anywhere. Alexis is elsewhere. He either knows what country she's in or he doesn’t. It doesn’t matter.

But every time, it feels exactly like reality. He hears the sounds of the place; the busy city streets, or the ambient pipe noises of the motel, or rain against his childhood bedroom window. He smells the expensive candles his mom lit in every room, or the old couch smell of the motel, or the sandalwood air freshener he used to use in his New York apartment. Everything is in place. Everything is real. Everything feels completely normal. The dream begins with zero questions; zero reason to think anything is going on.

And then his phone rings. That’s when the whole thing really takes off.

After that, it’s some flurry or another. It’s come identify the body. It’s send money for ransom negotiations. It’s come wait with the ambulance at the airport, her flight is landing soon. It’s calling his parents and having to tell them about whatever it is that’s happened to Alexis. It’s _fuck fuck fuck fuck._

This time, it’s worse than usual.

He’s sitting in the motel. Scrolling through Twitter on his phone, lounging on his twin bed, eating pretzels, the TV on ambiently a few feet away. The call is from the Thai embassy. It’s bad news. It’s the worst news. It comes with an email with a few photo attachments-- we just need you to identify the body, the embassy worker says on the phone, like this whole thing is nothing but a minor inconvenience. With shakey fingers, he gets into his laptop. Opens the images. His jaw falls slack; yeah, he says into the phone once he remembers how to speak; yeah, that’s my sister. 

More stuff happens. Or maybe it doesn’t. Once he wakes up, the less terrifying details are mostly forgotten.

“David.”

He blinks into the darkness. Wonders if he ever knew how to breathe.

“David, are you awake?”

A hand on his shoulder. He grabs for it. Takes a shakey second before he answers his boyfriend’s question.

“Yeah.”

“You were thrashing around a little.”

“I was?”

“Yeah,” Patrick’s cinnamon voice replies. “Are you okay?”

“Sorry I woke you up,” he says uncharacteristically, words fumbling against his mouth. His left hand, clasped around Patrick’s, is clenched too hard to be anything but still; but his right hand is trembling hard. He clenches his teeth. If he didn’t, they would clatter.

“You must’ve had a bad dream, huh?”

“Guess so,” he manages, barely a whisper.

“Go back to sleep,” Patrick suggests, a gentle kiss against David’s cheekbone. His fingers slide out of David’s grasp. His arms find their way around David’s shoulders instead.

He tries to relax against Patrick’s warmth. Maybe just for a split second, but he tries. Then, he pulls away. Yanks himself into a sitting position, leaning forward. His breaths come heavy and shakey and useless, barely touching his desperate lungs-- in and out too fast.

“Hey, whoa, it’s okay,” Patrick says, clearly taken off guard-- and he sits up too, touching David’s shoulder in the dark, reaching for David’s neck with the pad of his thumb; “your heart is racing. Take a deep breath.”

_Don’t you think I would if I could, don’t you think I’m trying,_ David’s mind screams. Nothing. Empty. Useless.

He curls forward even more, hands clawing at his face, his knees bent slightly under Patrick’s soft grey bedding. His mind swirls like a rickety fair ride, metal on metal under a hot late summer sun. The kind of ride that breaks and kills people. Or, at the very least, the kind of ride that makes kids puke up their cotton candy and slushies. 

His heart might actually explode. Jump out of his chest for real. His ribs might turn to putty and bend against the pressure, failing to do their one job. Or, maybe he’ll just have a heart attack and die. It’s whatever.

“David, hey, calm down. It’s okay. Just you and me. Everything’s fine.”

“I fucking know everything’s fine, I’m aware,” he snaps, his head slamming. Instantly, he regrets it-- knows Patrick is just trying to help, knows he needs to stop biting at the people he loves-- “sorry,” he manages to add.

“Just breathe, okay?”

He tries. Focuses on the arm around his shoulders. And it takes a few moments; but eventually, he breathes. 

“I’m sorry,” he says again, voice tiny and pathetic, easily breaking his personal record for Most Apologies Issued in One Day.

“Don’t worry about it. Must’ve been a pretty bad dream.”

“It’s just… dumb stress dreams. I used to get them all the time.”

“But you don’t anymore?” Patrick asks, touching David’s hair, nudging it off his forehead.

He sighs. Rubs at his eyes, which are feeling incredibly dry. “I mean, they’re all about Alexis. So no. Because I know where she is now.”

“Did you… not know where she was before?” Patrick asks.

“No. It was a new country all the fucking time. New boyfriends-- all terrible. She was always getting herself into some kind of fucking situation or another. So I would have these stress dreams about having to identify her body or some shit like that and I would always wake up and--” he pries one hand off his face to gesture vaguely into the dark. Sighs again. “But they don’t usually fuck with me anymore. Because I wake up there she is, sleeping, totally fine.”

“That does sound stressful,” Patrick says. “To have to worry about your little sister all the time.”

“Yeah.”

“Do you want to call her?” Patrick suggests.

David half-scowls, still covering his face with his hands. “No. She’s fine. She’s at the motel or with Ted, right? It’s fine. I’m just stupid.”

“You’re not stupid.”

“Then why am I still freaking the fuck out when I know exactly where my sister is?”

“How many years was it, that she was out running around foreign places with creeps and getting into trouble?”

“I don’t know. She went to high school in Switzerland, so ever since then. A little less than fifteen years.”

“That’s a long time,” Patrick says. “It’s only been a couple years since all that stopped, right? It makes sense that you still have a little bit of worry left over. I’m sure your parents do too.”

“No, I don’t think so.”

“Really?” 

“I was always the one she called,” David explains. “She kept most of it quiet from our parents so they wouldn’t freak out.”

“So she just let you do all the freaking out instead?” Patrick suggests.

David sighs again. Feels his heart continue to slam against his chest. “Yes.”

“That sucks. That’s a lot of pressure to put on you.”

“Yeah, well. She’s my sister,” he says uselessly.

“I understand,” Patrick says. 

He always seems to understand.

David works so hard to be cool-- to be sarcastic and uncaring and cold. But Schitt’s Creek has squeezed an embarrassing amount of emotion out of him. And when you wake up in the middle of a panic attack in the middle of the night-- it’s kind of impossible to play it cool anymore.

He wonders if that is maybe a good thing. He decides he’ll figure it out later.

“I’ve never really… talked about that,” David hears himself admit. “With anyone.”

“Not even with Alexis?”

“Once,” he answers. “For a second. But I don’t think she cares.”

“I bet she does,” Patrick says.

“You think?”

“Yeah.”

David frowns a little. Ponders it. Maybe Patrick is right. He usually is, about this kind of thing. Maybe Alexis does give a shit. Maybe she does realize how scary those years had been.

He lays back down. Snuggles against his boyfriend.

He’ll figure it out later.

**Author's Note:**

> thanks for reading!!! feel free to follow me on tumblr and request a fic or two at golden-geese :) and please leave a comment!!!


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